Come wander with me… and hear the story of an encounter with a deer

by Heather Plett | May 6, 2013 | Uncategorized

This weekend was magical – the kind of beautiful Spring weather that brings hope back to the prairies. It’s been a long, hard winter here, and Spring has never been more welcome.

Best of all? I finally had time to enjoy it. I wandered in the woods, visited the labyrinth, took pictures of the first tentative crocuses poking their heads above the soil, laid on the forest floor, and took lots of deep, healing breaths.

While I was wandering, I made this little video in which I introduce you to my favourite place to rejuvenate, and I tell you the story of an encounter with a deer.

A circle of connection

by Heather Plett | Apr 14, 2013 | Uncategorized

I am home tonight, for a quick stopover in between hosting a women’s retreat in the woods and then traveling tomorrow (after teaching one of my weekly classes) to Minneapolis for an Art of Hosting training.

My life, these days, is all about hosting meaningful, heart-based conversations, whether they take place in the classroom, at a retreat centre in the woods, around the table in a rural coffee shop, or over the phone or Skype. I am listening deeply, coaxing a lot of stories to come forward, sharing from my heart, and doing my best to create safe space for vulnerability to show up.

I can hardly imagine more important work to be doing than this. These spaces where conversations happen and people connect with each other are where the life blood of the world is pulsing. This is where change begins to happen. This is where hope grows.

At the end of the weekend retreat, each of the women was gifted with a stone that had a word carved in it (hope, love, courage, peace) and a beaded bracelet that reminds them of the circle they are now connected to. I asked them to hold out their hands, and it was only after I took the picture that I saw that the attempt at a circle had come out looking more like a heart. Either way, it works for me!

My roots are showing

by Heather Plett | Apr 11, 2013 | Uncategorized

There’s a ridge that runs across the prairies. It was once the beach of the prehistoric Lake Agassiz. Fed by glacial meltwater at the end of the last glacial period, its area was larger than all of the modern Great Lakes combined, and at times it held more water than contained by all lakes in the world today.

It is on that ridge that my parents’ bodies lay buried. Their bones now mingle with the fossils of ancient fish and salamander and water fowl.

Their unassuming graves lay just feet away from a stand of towering poplar trees. These trees have withstood the harsh winds, cold snows, and blistering heat that shapes the prairies. They are sturdy and courageous and they know how to find nourishment even in the sandy soil of the ridge. The roots of those trees will now feed on the decay of my parents’ bodies. The green leaves that will grow in the Spring will be richer because my mom and dad lend them their nourishment.

I will stand in the shade of those trees, come summer, and know that my mom and dad are still there, caring for me, feeding me, mingling with the soil and the trees and the dirt of centuries of history.

It matters to me, this knowledge that my roots are now entwined with the roots of these beautiful trees, and that the bones of my mom and dad are now mingled with the history of the prairies. It matters to me that the cycle of life goes on and that even in death, we matter to Mother Earth and she matters to us.

It may seem macabre, but it’s not really. It’s the cycle of life. It’s the way things are meant to be.

We can not extricate ourselves from this deep and meaningful connection.

You do not have to be good

by Heather Plett | Mar 21, 2013 | Uncategorized

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves.

I keep coming back to this elegant little slice of Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese.

You do not have to be good. You can be beautifully imperfect. You can mess up. You can fall flat on your face. You can embarrass yourself in front of your friends. You can let down someone you love.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles. You can let go of all of the “shoulds”, the “have-tos”, the obligations. You can lower your expectations. You don’t have to be responsible for the outcome. You can pour yourself a drink and sit down even if the sink is full of dishes.

It’s been a tough week – an emotional roller-coaster kind of week. I have beat myself up a thousand times. I have failed to meet my own expectations. I’ve been convinced that I should give up this work and go pour coffee at Starbucks. I’ve let the tape recorder run in my head that says “You’re foolish. Your ideas are stupid. People just don’t get what you’re trying to teach, so why bother?”

A week ago, I was sitting in a coffee shop in rural Manitoba after realizing that the facility I’d booked for an upcoming retreat just wasn’t going to cut it, and that little failure was letting my brain re-run all of the other failures in my life. The students in my class that weren’t engaging with what I was teaching, the failures to grow my business as much as I’d hoped, the crazy amount of work I’m doing right now for not enough pay, etc., etc. You know the tape – you’ve been there too.

In that moment, with my journal in front of me, I had a sudden awareness. “You are going to have to walk through the shadow before you can step back into the light. There is more for you to learn in the darkness, and you can’t get to that learning without another trip through.”

Sure enough, the shadow showed up big time this week, and I knew it was there for a reason. I knew it was there to teach me. I wallowed in self-doubt and self-pity, and everything that fell apart was surely my fault. By Saturday night, when my daughter Maddy’s birthday party threatened to be a flop because the pool at the hotel we were staying at was closed, I had gone so far into that deep dark place that I was sure THAT was my fault too. And when people didn’t seem to get what I was teaching at a workshop and in my regular class, I took that on as well. “Surely I am failing,” the shadow whispered to me.

It was all good, though, and important. It was all the things I needed to learn in a deeper way. It was teaching me that I can fail, I can let things fall apart, and that doesn’t mean that I am a failure. It was re-teaching me that I need to return to my spiritual practices – my touchstones – to help me stay grounded in times of darkness. It was reminding me that, no matter how far I go in this journey, I still have to be willing to risk and fail, willing to surrender to the God of my understanding, and willing to let go of the outcome.

Last night, I was reading The Three Marriages by David Whyte, where he shares a story of leading a trek in Bhutan. On the way out of the mountains, everything was falling apart. He was in conflict with their arrogant and incompetent guide, and they’d lost one of the women on the trail. He spent all night looking for the woman, in the dark, in the rain, on a mountain trail. All the while, he was beating himself up for his failings and for not having more courage to confront the incompetent guide.

Suddenly he had a moment of profound peace and he knew that the woman would show up at the camp the next morning.

Sure enough, the woman appeared just as he’d envisioned. She’d spent a remarkable, though frightening, night in an empty cabin on the trail, and the same sense of peace had come over her. A few weeks later, when she went to Cambodia to pick up the baby she’d been planning to adopt, she found that the baby that was meant for her was born on that very night she was alone on the trail. She realized that she was meant to be alone that night, walking through the darkness and the fear to a place of calm, to be part of her baby’s birthing process.

David came home from that journey with a renewed sense of understanding of how even his failings can be used for a bigger plan.

You don’t have to be good. You can screw up big time. Your failings may open a door for someone else into a place where they need to be.

You are part of a bigger plan, and you don’t have to get everything right to be part of it. You just have to show up, do your best, and TRUST.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Aaaahhhh…. what a relief!

There is good work to do

by Heather Plett | Mar 19, 2013 | Uncategorized

I sat in a small room at the hospital, between my friend Terence and a social worker and across from two police officers. I had just been raped by a man high on glue who’d climbed in my bedroom window. Terence had brought me to the hospital.

“You need to think seriously before you lay charges,” said the social worker. “It’s not just about bringing someone to justice, it’s about whether or not you feel you can handle the trial. If this goes to trial, it probably won’t happen for at least a year, and then you’ll have to drag up all of your memories of this horrible night again. Not only that, but lawyers will pry into your personal life and the choices that you made – things that might have brought this on or made it easy for the rapist to get into your room. It will feel like you’re being raped all over again.”

I was shocked. I hadn’t realized that the decision about whether or not the police would go after the man who raped me and whether or not he would be punished rested on my shoulders.

Despite what the social worker said, it seemed like a no-brainer to me. Of COURSE I wanted the man to be caught and punished, especially if it might stop him from climbing through the window of some other young woman and raping her too.

They never caught him, though I did have to visit the police station to view mug shots once or twice (much harder than they make it seem in the police dramas on TV) and I had to write down all of the details I could remember, in case he was found a few years later.

I never had to face trial and, fortunately, I had a strong support system that helped me heal from the trauma (though I still show the emotional scars now and then). Although I heard a few questions about why I’d left the window open on a stifling hot night and why I hadn’t just kicked him in the groin (the answer: because he was holding a blade over my head and tried to choke me to death when I angered him), nobody went so far as to blame me for my own rape.

Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the young woman who was raped by a couple of football players in Steubenville last August. According to the media, her community, and the people at the party who stood by and did nothing, she was raped because she was a slut, because she was drunk, because she deserved it, etc., etc.

To make matters worse, she’s now had death threats because she dared to accuse the football-playing favoured sons of the community. And she has to be subjected to the media who shows blatant bias toward the unfortunate rapists whose lives have been ruined by this.

I can hardly tell you what this story does to me. It’s bringing up anger, empathy, sadness, despair, and countless other emotions. I am shocked by the way that the media has treated this story. I am angered by the young people at the party who knew what was going on and didn’t stop it. I am outraged by a coach who apparently knew about it and laughed it off.

Mostly, I am disappointed that so little has changed since I was raped. Back then – nearly 25 years ago – I made a conscious decision that I would do what I could to bring the man to justice, even if it meant I wouldn’t be treated well by the court system. I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I chose not to press charges, and six months later I heard that he’d done the same thing to another girl.

I can’t say that I’ve done everything I could to work for change for rape victims, but I have certainly given a fair bit of energy toward trying to change the flawed cultural paradigms that let rapists get away with it and let victims carry the blame. In those 25 years, I have continued to carry hope that we can change our views and our justice system so that victims aren’t raped again when they enter the court system.

I must admit, though, when I listened to the CNN reporters lament the way these boys lives have been ruined by this verdict, all the while ignoring how dramatically this young woman’s life has been altered, I was filled with both rage and despair. Has my hope in the last 25 years been all for naught? Has nothing changed? In fact, I wonder if it has actually gotten worse, considering we now have a term for “rape culture” and we have politicians who speak openly about how the women can sometimes be blamed and the woman’s body can shut down and avoid pregnancy from a rape.

Yesterday, I let myself dip into despair and a sense of utter futility. What’s the use in working for change when things only get worse? What’s the use in fighting when it feels like a losing battle?

At the same time as this news was coming out, we received another huge dump of snow on our city and the cold weather has returned, even though it’s the middle of March and it should be starting to feel like Spring. My despair over the weather mirrored my despair over the state of the world. As I shoveled the snow in our driveway, I wondered if Spring would ever come again. “What’s the point in shoveling all this snow if we’re just going to get another dump again next week?”

Even as I shoveled, though, I knew that Spring will come again. I have lived through forty-seven winters, and that’s enough experience to know that winter never lasts forever – Spring always arrives, whether it’s in March or May.

I also knew I had a choice to make – get stuck in the snow the next time I try to pull my van out of the driveway, or keep shoveling it out of the way each time it falls. Similarly, I could get lost in despair over the Steubenville rape and give up my belief that change is possible, or strengthen my resolve and keep sharing my stories and keep working for change.

I chose the latter. A life without some hope and some desire to move forward into a better future is not a real life at all.

I am reminded of a song that my friend Steve Bell wrote, inspired by a woman who wrote a piece after her cousin committed suicide. Despite her despair, there is laundry to be done and she knows she must carry on.

We’re not alone
laundry awash in the mid-morning sun
you can see angels dance as they try blouses on
there is good work to do

We’re not alone
casting long shadows as the day wears on
Billy had troubles, now Billy is gone
there is good work to do

kissing eyelids closed like caskets
breaking bread and filling baskets
pressing dress and swabbing soiled floors

fast remains of feast and fanion
evidence of ghost companions
greeting some and showing some the door

we’re not alone
wordlessly stung by a sliver blue moon
closed casket wake in a cold living room
there is good work to do

Listen here: [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/78760610″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Yes, there is good work to do, and I will keep doing it. I may not be able to single-handedly wipe out rape culture, but I can teach my daughters that they are beautiful and that their bodies are their own and nobody has a right to violate them. And I can encourage my nephews and the young men around me who are living with integrity and respect for women.

I did some of that good work yesterday. I played the CNN clip for my Public Relations students and we talked about media bias and what we as concerned citizens can do to challenge our media to report with integrity and compassion. And then I welcomed Barbara Judt, the CEO of Osborne House, the local women’s shelter, into the classroom to talk about the work that they do to protect women who’ve been abused and to help them heal from the violence. My students are in the midst of creating a campaign in support of Osborne House as their class project, and in the process, they’re learning about violence against women and are having lots of conversations about what we can do to contribute to making their lives better.

Yes, there are bad things happening in the world, but if I live in a world in which a classroom full of students can get passionate about doing something for women who are victims of violence, then I can continue to live with hope.

Indeed, there is good work to do.